Germantown Newspapers

The Germantown Chronicle • The Northwest Independent

6661 Germantown Ave • Philadelphia, PA 19119 • 215-438-4000 • germantownnewspapers.com

The only paper in Germantown, Mt. Airy and Chestnut Hill delivered door-to-door to over 36,500 households. 

Follow us on Facebook  •  Issue of May 9, 2013 | Last Update: May 10, 2013

May 9 Independent.pdf    May 9 Chronicle.pdf

April 25 Independent.pdf     April 25 Chronicle.pdf

April 11 Chronicle.pdf    April 11 Independent.pdf

March 28 Independent.pdf     March 28 Chronicle.pdf



May 15

Philadelphia & PA Regional Candidates Night

This is a great opportunity for you to come out and talk with Philadelphia residents about important issues concerning our region, as well as, answer questions from the audience. This is a chance for voters to learn more about you, and a chance for you to express why you are running for office.

This forum will be held as follows:

DATE: Wednesday,

May 15, 2013

TIME: 5 p.m.

PLACE:

Joseph E. Coleman NW Regional Library

68 W. Chelten Avenue

(at Greene Street)

Philadelphia, PA 19144

Please RSVP your interest to participate in this forum by contacting Rev. Chester H. Williams - CBNC President & Founder, before Friday, May 3, 2013. You may email him at jesus4620032004@yahoo.com or call him at (215) 849-8021.

This forum is sponsored by the following Northwest Philadelphia Community Groups:

Chew & Belfield Neighbors Club, Inc. (CBNC), Awbury Neighbors Association & Awbury Arboretum

Telephone: (215) 849-8021

Email: jesus4620032004 @yahoo.com

chewandbelfield.webs.com

The CBNC is a 501(c)(3) and Registered Community Organization (RCO) Group

Chew and Belfield Neighbors Club, Inc. 501(c )(3).


The Day the Music Died

I could think of no better phrase to describe the events of September 11, 2001 than borrowing the line from the 1970’s song reflecting on a 1950’s event.  It has been said that during the tumultuous late 1960’s America lost its innocence.  On September 11, 2001, America lost its independence.  It lost not only the independence and personal freedoms so wisely set forth by our forefathers, but also lost the independence we enjoyed from the constricted and supervised lifestyles of those living in virtually all other countries.

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A Different War in Women

by Victoria A. Brownworth


The phrase "war on women" is used frequently by Progressives to describe restrictions on contraception and access to abortion promoted by Conservatives. Yet there is another war on women going on in this country that gets far less attention than reproductive rights. That war on women should be headline news on both sides of the political aisle, but remains largely ignored.

On May 6 three young women who had been missing for a decade in Cleveland were found. The women–14, 16 and 20 when they were abducted–had been held prisoner by three brothers in their 50s in a quiet, mostly Latino neighborhood not unlike East Mt. Airy. One of the three women had been forced to have a child with one of her captors.

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Creating Community by the Barrel

by Linda Slodki


What happens when artists bring children, adults, and elders together to create painted rain barrels? They build community. They make waves for water conservation through their paintings and luscious images. They raise awareness of water as a natural resource.

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City Government: Mismanaging the Madness

April 25: Philadelphia moves into free fall even faster as the days go by and Mayor Michael Nutter is the face of failure.  We have reported on his defiant and arrogant approach to governance before, but the pace accelerates with each passing day.   Reminiscent of one-party power mongers of the past, Nutter takes a Huey Long approach as the “kingfish” who disregards all manner of propriety, personal and fiscal responsibility to the people, underscored regularly with a “my way or the highway” pattern. But he is losing ground even among the true believers as the train wreck on the horizon is becoming a clearer and clearer picture even to the most calloused observer.

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Fattah Chief of Staff and Germantown Newspapers

2014 Election Gets an Early Start

April 25: Congressman Chaka Fattah rarely takes any criticism seriously and his office never even bothers to respond to comments of politicians or journalists as he considers himself invincible and electable into eternity.  Designated as the “safest seat in the U.S. Congress”, the Pennsylvania 2nd Congressional District seat that encompasses half of Philadelphia and parts of adjacent Montgomery County must be seen in a new light as Fattah’s Chief of Staff sends written barbs to the Independently registered challenger in the last election who garnered a full 1.4% of the vote, and who publishes this Northwest Philadelphia newspaper.  I mentioned Congressman Fattah in a recent editorial critiquing how public money is used in this city.

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Calling Foul on Foster’s Editorial

Editor:

As an active Northwest neighbor, former journalist and recently retired press secretary for Congressman Fattah, I'm writing to call foul on the Mr. Foster's last editorial.  His swipes at the work of some of our neighborhood organizations, an academic institution, and some elected officials are without fact or merit.

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Gosnell Case Raises Questions

by Victoria A. Brownworth


April 25: The trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell began March 18. It took a few weeks of increasingly gruesome testimony for anti-choice activists to notice. Once they did, they asserted that no one had been reporting on the case of the illegal abortion provider in University City who was initially charged with the murders of a Bhutanese refugee and mother of four, Karnmayar Mongar, 41 and seven babies born alive during botched abortion procedures.

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Election of New Members of the Germantown Special Services District Board of Directors

by Pamela Bracey


April 25: On Wednesday, April 17, a meeting was held at State Representative Stephen Kinsey's (201st Legislative District) office to elect new members of the GSSD Board of Directors. There were approximately twenty persons present with representatives from the Commerce Department, Councilwoman Cindy Bass' office, State Representative Rosita C. Youngblood's office, business and property owners from the GSSD area and interested community persons. State Law and the By-Laws require this election.

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Your Children Belong to the State

MSNBC Anchor Dreams of Huxley Prophecy

I could not believe what I was watching on a YouTube film of an MSNBC intermission public service announcement of the type they have been promoting lately.  Unabashedly self-confident and in her usual authoritarian and condescending tone, daytime anchor Melissa Harris-Perry told the audience that they must get over their “private notion of children and that your kid is yours”.  Expanding on the subject she relates that we must adapt to the “very collective notion” that the children belong to the community and are “our children” and do not belong to parents of the families.  “They will be raised by the society.”


Stunned, I flashbacked to a day in the summer of 1963 when I was stationed with a Marine Detachment at the Naval Air Station in Millington Tennessee, just outside of Memphis.  One of the men in the unit threw me a paperback and told me:  “read this, it is science fiction, but it is an amazing story.”  It was Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, written in 1931 forecasting how universal socialism would render the human experience by 2540.   Interviewed in 1958 relative to his forecasts from the 30’s, Huxley observed that we were moving in that direction much faster than he anticipated.  According to Ms. Harris-Perry, we are very close, if we can all just get our minds right. She was clearly convinced that there was no need for debate on this subject of children - - just compliance.

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The Woman Who Saved Britain

In a country that routinely sees a self-important citizenry bite the hands that feed them, Margaret Thatcher was a defiantly strong woman among the weakened men of the late 20th Century.


Beginning with the political dumping of Winston Churchill after guiding a nearly failed country through World War II, institutional socialism and political ineptness had all but eradicated the place on the world stage for what was once the reigning British Empire.

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Margaret Thatcher Revisited

by Victoria A. Brownworth

When former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher died April 8, I had to stop and take a breath. A page had turned in world history.


I spent a lot of time in London during the last years of Thatcher’s tenure, reporting on various issues. It was a period of upheaval and protest, yet despite that, Thatcher was elected three times, serving as Prime Minister from 1979 through 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and to date, the only woman ever elected prime minister in the U.K.

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All Reporters Matter – Even at Fox

by Victoria A. Brownworth

Jana Winter may be going to jail. Most progressives like myself aren’t usually paying attention to what happens over at FOX news, but this week I was.


Winter will be in court on April 17 for a special hearing. Winter, a FOX news investigative reporter who covered the Aurora, Colorado trial of accused mass murderer James Holmes, first broke the story that Holmes had given his psychiatrist a notebook prior to the shooting rampage in a movie theater that killed 12 and injured 70 others, some of whom are permanently disabled from their injuries.

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Adding Insult to Outrage

March 28, 2013: I had the genuine misfortune to attend the scheduled meeting of the state controlled PICA Board last week in order to better understand how that oversight entity reviewed city budget operations, as it is required to do under the Laws of the Commonwealth.


Created in 1991 as the city was facing municipal collapse and borrowed money from the state to meet basic obligations, it is staffed by five individuals appointed by the Governor and Republican and Democrat senators and representatives.

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Poverty Profiteering

It has been just about 15 years now since I first started sending my comments to the Northwest Philadelphia newspapers taking on the political establishment and its cozy dealings with developers, rampant sidestepping of City Codes, the flagrant misuse of non-profits and public money in the hundreds of millions and how it began as far back as 1968 but really escalated in our community and Philadelphia in general by the late 1970s.

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City Reaction to Scofflaw

L & I takes prompt action, sends document

Sanitation goes to denial, despite photo

March 28, 2013: The front page story in our last issue was one regarding a major scofflaw development project at 33 Carpenter Lane in West Mt. Airy. The entire process was done outside of the law and photographic evidence time dated showed City of Philadelphia Sanitation trucks removing the demolition debris in three special runs done to the location as evidenced by eye witnesses.

Read More ...

 

The Papers in

PDF Format

(Complete Issues)

Archived  Issues


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March 14 Independent.pdf

March 14 Chronicle.pdf

Feb. 28 Chronicle.pdf

Feb. 28 Independent.pdf

Feb. 14 Chronicle.pdf

Feb. 14 Independent.pdf

Jan. 31 Independent.pdf

Jan. 31 Chronicle.pdf


Please Buy Our Plants Again (because)

Hansberry Garden & Nature Center will host a native plant sale on May 11th at the corner of Hansberry and Wayne from 9 am to 4 pm.  As we consider what to do with our yards, flower baskets and vegetable gardens this year the question of native species versus exotic may come up. So what is so important about native plants?

I’ve got a garden in front of my row house on Pulaski Avenue.  I use almost exclusively native perennials on my 18’x18’ patch of earth because I don’t have to mow it. I don’t have to fertilize it. “Weeding” in my garden is usually done with a beer in my hand, not a weed-killer. Now that my garden is established, I don’t have to water it except in the dog days of July and August between storms. I usually do that with a beer in my hand, too.

Whether or not you want native plants to be your new excuse to drink, they do play a critical role in keeping our ecosystem and even our agricultural systems up and running.  It’s sometimes heartbreaking to consider the extent to which we’ve converted the fertile river banks of the Delaware and the Schuylkill into our teaming city. Consider the wildlife that must have lived here among the Lenape tribes: puma, elk, forest bison (extinct), wolves, to name just a few.  Our city, like so many others, has effectively capped some of the most precious terrain on the continent like a land-fill.  Regardless of Philadelphia’s current land cover, we’re still at the confluence of those major rivers, still at the bio-diverse boundary between mountains and coastal shores, still a source of food and nutrients to insects, birds, and other wildlife who are just passing through. In a modern world constantly on the brink of change, native plants remain. A flora encompassed tradition that provides balance to our local neighborhoods and remains as a vital fuel supply link to the larger world. Your native plants will help bolster insects that pollinate our crops, which will fuel birds, which will then migrate to wild areas or farmlands, which will then fuel everyone from house cats to bobcats and more. Most non-native plants can’t serve as nearly so valuable an energy source.

So, why plant with native plants? Because you’ll save money (Hansberry’s prices are lowest for blocks around), you’ll save time on mowing (we’ll help you chose the right perennials for your sunny or shady space), you’ll like the way they look (aquilegia is more romantic than rose and will also inspire you to design space ships in your free time), you’ll save water, and you’ll contribute to a world that’s way more important than the internet in a way that really matters to us and other species.


We hope to see you at the corner of Hansberry and Wayne on Saturday, May 12th. Its amazing to be a part of a this Germantown neighborhood that banned together ten years ago to raise a blighted corner to an award winning garden. Cash or credit card accepted. We also have organic herbs, veggies and flowers for Mom. Proceeds will help us continue to grow food for local pantries and keep us eating locally.


Chris Mendel


Older Posts

  1. Bullet On the AFS Story

  2. Bullet Chaput Puts Politics First

  3. Bullet A City in Freefall

  4. Bullet The Great Scam

  5. Bullet Changing Parties When the Price is Right

  6. Bullet Helicopter Assessments Land

  7. Bullet GSSD Still Facing Challenges

  8. Bullet Inquirer Breaks the Story

  9. Bullet Quaker Nonprofit Loses Tax-Exempt Status

  10. Bullet More Affordable Housing Comes to Nicetown

  11. Bullet Philadelphia: The Great Experiment

  12. Bullet The Great Race to Chestnut Hill

  13. Bullet We Need More Budget Info

  14. Bullet What Would Martin Luther King Do?

  15. Bullet What, Me Worry?

  16. Bullet Calculated Vandalism in Chestnut Hill

  17. Bullet We Need Tough Fiscal Watchdogs

  18. Bullet Condoms for Philly Schools

  19. Bullet City Continues Germantown Neglect

  20. Bullet Churches Plan for King Day of Service

  21. Bullet Germantown Kids Lose Again: Brownworth

  22. Bullet Dems Investigate But ...

  23. Bullet State of Decay and Denial; Foster

  24. BulletTaxpayers’ Debt Just Got Heavier

  25. Bullet Kennedy’s Turn to Peace: Clark

  26. Bullet The Great Train Race

  27. Bullet When Democrats Were Responsible Capitalists

  28. Bullet Philly’s Fiscal Cliffl

  29. Bullet Germantown Community Control

  30. Bullet A Helping Hand Reaches Out

  31. Bullet Return to Anti-Trust

  32. Bullet Be True to Your School

  33. Bullet Time to Dissolve the Electoral College

  34. Bullet OARC Under Investigation

  35. Bullet Invisible City

  36. Bullet A Letter to President Obama

  37. Bullet Fact Check ... and Response

  38. Bullet Time to Move Forward

  39. Bullet Halloween Losing Its Crowds

  40. Bullet Northern Ireland

  41. Bullet Think Before You Vote

  42. Bullet Gotcha Games Make Headlines, Not Change

  43. Bullet Public Corruption Targeted

  44. Bullet We the People

  45. Bullet Academic Arrogance

  46. Bullet Free Speech in Philadelphia Schools

  47. Bullet Artists Taking Back Philadelphia, Brick by Brick

  48. Bullet Wayne Junction Station Rebuilding on Track

  49. Bullet Crime, Crises and Controversy

  50. Bullet PA Set to Execute Again

  51. Bullet Philadelphia Test Scores Drop

  52. Bullet Can Philly Learn from Vacant Lot Robin Hood?

  53. Bullet Strange Times in Blight Court

  54. Bullet Local 102-Year-Old Marine Receives Presidential Medal

  55. Bullet Strange Times in Blight Court

  56. BulletAre Parking Kiosks a Killer

  57. Bullet We Gotta See It - Mandel

  58. Bullet Blight Court

  59. Bullet No Way to Run a Democracy

  60. Bullet Why Fracking Matters

  61. Bullet The Big Bounce - Brownworth

  62. Bullet Tale of America’s Teeth - Brownworth

  63. Bullet Rosita Youngblood’s Voice is Heard

  64. Bullet The War on Women is Personal - Brownworth

  65. Bullet I’ll Take Philly Politics - Mandel

  66. Bullet Gem of the Ancient Village - Dragoni

  67. Bullet 9/11 Anniversary Raises Questions

  68. Bullet Labor Day, Voter ID, Stand-Up Lawmaker - Alloway

  69. Bullet Byrne House Report

  70. BulletFoster Announces House Bid

  71. Bullet Michelle Obama in Area

  72. Bullet Ballot Access Story Needs Telling

  73. Bullet Mandell: Philadelphia-Maneto

  74. Bullet Brownworth: More Peril for the Poor

  75. Bullet How Candidates Negotiate PA Electoral Law

  76. Bullet Repressing the Vote in PA

  77. Bullet Phillies: Beginning or End?

  78. Bullet The Aftermath of Child Abuse

  79. Bullet PICA: Reject the City’s Spending Plan

  80. Bullet Voter ID Issues at the Fore

  81. Bullet Updated Calendar - August 21

 

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  3. BulletCLASSIFIEDS May 10

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Germantown Chronicle

Northwest Independent

6661 Germantown Avenue

Philadelphia, PA 19119

215-438-4000

Fax 215-754-4245

GNI on Facebook


Editorial

Publisher

Jim Foster


Social Media Editor

Tracie Johnson


Associate Editor

Scott Alloway


Chris Saxon

Sportswriter


Advertising

Paula Moore,

Sales Representative


Phyllis Sunberg

Sales Representative

Ann Spaeth Passes Away

Free Legal Advice on June 19


The Philadelphia Bar Association will offer free legal advice to residents of Philadelphia and the surrounding counties on June 19, between 5 and 8 p.m.  Members of the public can access the service by calling the Association’s LegalLine P.M. hotline at (215) 238-6333.


Area residents seeking confidential legal advice will be able to speak for free with a volunteer attorney from the Philadelphia Bar Association.  Attorneys are available to offer information about any aspect of the law including family law, landlord-tenant, workers’ compensation and employment law, among other topics.


LegalLine P.M. is a public service sponsored by the Young Lawyers Division of the Philadelphia Bar Association. LegalLine P.M. is offered on the third Wednesday of every month from 5 to 8 p.m.  LRIS is available Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., by calling (215) 238-6333.


William Campbell Passes

Mr. William Eugene Campbell, Jr., affectionately known as “Bill,” was born to the late Mr. William E. Campbell Sr. and the late Mrs. Mae Campbell of Philadelphia, PA on August 31, 1928.  Bill was the oldest of four (4) children:  Lois Campbell Ruffin, Bernice Campbell Goldsmith and Eddie Campbell (Deceased), all born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. 


Bill departed this life on April 29, 2013, at Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia, PA. Preceding Bill in death was his eldest son, Gaylord Eric Campbell, who passed this life on October 21, 2008.  Bill re-committed his life to Jesus Christ prior to his death.


He is survived by three duaghters, Paula Moore, Patricia Moore and Linda Milton. Paula works in executive sales at Germantown Newspapers.

Services will be held Friday, May 10, at Miller Memorial Baptist Church, 1518 N. 22nd Street, Philadelphia. Viewing will be from 9 to 10 a.m. followed by a service at 10 a.m.


Interment will be private.